Hello, Again
by Pat Foley
Summary: In this sequel to Lingustics, Nyota meets Spock again on a Fleet campus visit. Spock/Uhura, Complete.


**Hello, Again**

**By**

**Pat Foley**

_sequel to Linguistics_

"Spock," Nyota Uhura waved her arm higher above the crowds in the mag train station. "Here!"

The focus of her call turned his head, hearing her even above the noise and commotion of the crowded station. It was an elegant head, with an exceptionally keen pair of Vulcan ears. Though he didn't wave in return, his face relaxed from narrow-eyed search-mode into welcome, and he crossed to her and took her bags.

"Aren't you gallant?" Uhura said, a bit taken aback. She had forgotten some, his polished manners. The callow grad students she generally palled around with were a cut removed from such gestures. She stood up on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek in return.

"Nyota," Spock straightened away from her. He glanced around warily, discovering in the process that no one was the slightest bit interested in a couple kissing upon meeting. Even when half that couple was a Vulcan Starfleet Officer.

"Don't tell me you gotten shy?" Nyota asked. "We did spent six weeks together, somewhat **intimately** as I recall."

"I am not shy," Spock replied, looking down at her. "But I see I will have to get used to your ways again."

"Then you missed me?" Uhura teased. "My place hasn't been usurped by an Orion slave girl, or some other heart-sick co-ed taken with your tall dark handsome looks?"

"No one replaced you," Spock answered, a half amused, half vexed curve teasing the corner of his mouth before being rigidly controlled. "I don't think anyone could."

"I'll take that as a compliment," Nyota said, "even though it's clear you only half mean it as such." She threaded her arm through his.

"I **am** curious," Spock began, as they walked out into the Bay area sunshine, "**Intellectually** curious," he added, "but given **you** have raised the subject, I would like to know if anyone has replaced **me **in the interval since we last met."

"You **did** miss me," Uhura said with satisfaction. She stopped and kissed him again, not a quick peck on the cheek, but a real one that began with a brush on the lips and deepened so that Spock dropped her bag and took her hands in his, this time uncaring who was watching. "Hello, **again**," she said.

"Hello," he replied automatically. "But if this is meant to distract me from the fact that you have not **ans**-"

"There hasn't been anyone else," she told him. "Somehow, Mr. Spock, sugar, after **you** no one else seems worth pursuing."

Spock flicked a brow at that, and then belatedly regarded the bag he had dropped. "I do hope there was nothing breakable in that."

"If there was, we'll just have to go shopping to replace it. I wouldn't mind doing a bit of that. As well as seeing some of the sights. I've never been to San Francisco before."

"It's foggy and cold in the winter," Spock warned her. Then remembering he was supposed to be selling the city and Starfleet, he added "But it has many cultural attractions. Music and dance. Opera. Art. Sports," he added, giving her stylish dress a doubtful look as to whether she was interested in such.

"And Starfleet." She took a step back and looked him over. "I've never seen you in a Fleet uniform since you did that one recruiting talk at the Summer Linguistics Institute. "I can't say it really suits you. But it looks better than that awful windbreaker you had on when we first met."

He raised a brow at that criticism. "May I remind you, that at the time you were attired **entirely** in summer camp clothes?"

"Please don't," Uhura winced. "Gaila still teases me about that, even though my wearing them was her fault. Hey, did you get a promotion? You have another half stripe."

Spock looked down at his sleeve. "Since I completed my studies at MIT, yes, I have enhanced a grade. There is much opportunity for advancement in Starfleet for competent scientists."

She took his arm, leaning against him comfortably. "You don't need to give **me** the recruiting spiel. I mean, I know that's what I'm here for, but I can hear it from those who are authorized to give it, tomorrow. For now," she looked up at him, smiling. "I'm just really glad to see **you** again."

"I'm also …pleased." He looked down at her and then fractionally shook himself. "Come, I will take you to the campus and—"

She caught him up, tugging him to a halt. "Uh... Spock."

He turned back and looked at her. "Yes, Nyota?"

"I suppose that potential visiting cadets get the usual undergraduate accommodations? Packed like sardines several to a room in campus dorms, and so on?"

"Yes," he allowed.

"Well, I don't have an objection to seeing the student dorms," she said. "Tomorrow, as part of checking out the campus. But I'm **not** a typical undergrad. And there's no requirement that I have to stay in campus housing this weekend, is there?"

He flicked a brow, frowning slightly. "Not exactly. Though it is the usual practice."

"You can't really **want** me to stay there, can you? And I imagine it might be a little awkward for me to stay with **you**, the way I did in Hawaii, given I'm coming here as a potential recruit. So why don't we find a nice hotel near the campus?"

He looked down at her, no expression on his face, considering this development.

She put her hand in his, fingers sliding against his suggestively. "You did say you took leave for this weekend? To show me the sights."

"We never actually defined what sights those might be," he returned cautiously.

"Spock!" she gave him a level look. Then sighed, realizing she had better spell it out. They had communicated quite a bit in the months since Hawaii. But it had hardly been love notes. More like two colleagues catching each other up on news. "So we can fool around a little in decent surroundings, without hordes of grubby cadets around us."

"Fooling around?" he said.

"How clearly do I have to say this?" she asked him, raising both brows. "I know you know the colloquialism."

He looked down at her hand in his, but didn't answer directly. "In the months that have passed," he admitted quietly, "I sometimes have wondered if that interlude in Hawaii was quite real."

"It **was** a bit of a tropical romantic fling," she agreed. "But let me refresh your memory." She leaned up and kissed him again, as a reminder and a promise. "It was real. I am real. I like you. You liked me too. Quite a lot as I recall. And I'm here, in no small part because it's where **you** are. I've been looking forward to renewing that acquaintance, in all its facets. **Including** fooling around."

He set his mouth against a betraying half smile. "Very well. If you wish."

"I wish. What about you? What do **you** wish?"

He drew a slow measured breath. She raised her brows, looking at him, waiting for an answer. "I wish also," he admitted.

She smiled. "See how simple that is?"

He frowned slightly. "I don't know that this relationship can **be** that simple, especially in future. But for now, there is nothing untoward about it."

"I'm not looking far forward either, Spock," Uhura said. "Let's let the future take care of itself." She put her hand back in his as they walked out. "I got a message from your mother," she said as they walked through the sunshine outside the station.

"I asked her to write to you," Spock said, waving a robotic cab over. "Regarding your search for graduate placement."

"She was helpful. Even offered to put in a good word for me at the Vulcan Science Academy." Uhura looked at him as he put her bags in the cab. "But she wasn't **too** surprised when I told her that I just might be considering Starfleet."

"My mother is a romantic," Spock dismissed. He punched an address into the cab computer. "It is probably best not to encourage her in that regard."

Uhura gave Spock a sidelong glance. "I didn't tell her we spent six weeks together in Hawaii. Did you?"

Spock frowned at her, puzzled. "Of course I did."

"Spock!" Uhura blushed.

He frowned. "Oh. Not **together**, together. But she knows we attended the same institute."

"If you said it like **that**, she probably assumed the rest."

Spock tilted his head, considering that as the cab arrived at the hotel. "I am no linguist. Nor am I expert in these sorts of communications. If there are subtleties involved, you will have to impart those."

"I'll certainly try," she countered. She looked at him as they stood on the pavement, while the cab flew off. "You're coming in, of course."

He looked at her, reserved and removed.

"I **want** you to come in."

He let out a little half sigh, and then nodded slightly. "Then I shall."

She registered, and they went up to her room. "It has a lovely view," she said, looking out over the Golden Gate Bridge.

"It does," Spock said, coming up behind her, still holding her bag. But he was looking down at her.

She turned and they were kissing. Her bag got dropped again, but this time neither one of them noticed. The months since they had left each other in Hawaii disappeared as if there had never been a separation of distance, or time. Or bodies. Kisses turned into caresses, turned into clothing cast aside as mere tedious encumbrances. They returned to that past island state of skin to skin, hand to hand, touch to touch, thought to thought. And beyond. As if they had never been apart.

Uhura came back to herself in the suite's wide bed, quite in her altogether, next to an equally unencumbered Vulcan. Spock was looking down at her thoughtfully, a slight frown between his brows.

"I may not be a fully commissioned Starfleet linguist, but I'd define **that** as **together**, together," she said, running a finger down the classic line of his nose. "Diamondhead might not be rumbling outside here in San Francisco as it was in Hawaii. But I think the earth definitely moved."

"There are many earthquakes here," Spock said, latching onto that diversion. "San Francisco is at the conjugation of many subterranean faults-"

"Spock!" she warned.

Spock let out a sigh. "I do not understand the effect you have on me," he admitted with some vexation.

"Well, I don't understand the effect you seem to have on **me**," Uhura countered, moving to trace his lips. "I'm not like this with anyone else. But I guess for **us**, it works."

He caught her hand, moving his head back a little, away from her teasing touch. "Don't **do** that," he warned. "Unless you are quite ready to repeat these activities."

"You do have a way with words," she said, laughing softly, and laying her head on his chest. "I want to officially note that I **really** missed you. I mean, yes, I said I missed you before, but that was your company, your conversation. I was trying not to think about **this**." She shook her head. "All those chaste messages we've sent each other these last few months, as if pretending what happened between us before didn't **really** happen, and we were just friends and colleagues. That didn't last ten minutes past our getting together again."

"I **meant** the messages," Spock countered. "I valued our correspondence."

"I did too," she said, putting her hand over his. "I wouldn't want to be involved with someone I couldn't **talk** to. But I have never met anyone that I felt I couldn't **resist** before." She turned her head to look up at him. "And it seems to be mutual." She sighed a little, musing. "I wonder if that's good or bad."

"The morality of this confuses me," Spock said. "We are both consenting adults with no other ties. But as a general rule, Vulcans do not engage in casual relationships."

"I haven't **been** with anyone since I left you either. Went out on a few dates," she admitted, tickling his belly idly, watching as he locked his stomach muscles against it. "Thought about it. But the chemistry wasn't there beyond a kiss or two." She felt the rigidity locking his muscles that had nothing to do with her teasing fingers and added, "a **chaste** kiss or two."

"How can a kiss be chaste?" Spock asked, a bit testily.

She kissed him very lightly, with closed lips and drew back when he bent his head to deepen it. "Chaste," she defined, putting a hand on his chest to stop him.

His eyes narrowed in frustration. "I commend your control."

"It's easy when the chemistry isn't there. I'm beginning to think you have spoiled me for anyone else." She looked at him. "Anyway, **you** can't tell **me** that little Fleet co-eds aren't throwing themselves at **your** feet every day, every class."

Spock flicked a brow impatiently. "Human females have a sometimes regrettable habit of such."

"Oh, we do, do we?" she flared, starting to sit up.

"Present company excepted," he clarified, and leaning down kissed her thoroughly into the bed, defining his feelings, before sitting back and looking into her eyes. "As you can see, I have had no interest in pursuing such relationships with anyone else."

"I like your answer," she teased. "But as to good or bad," she continued, more seriously. "I didn't mean anything other than wondering if it will work out for us, even as a temporary thing."

"Temporary," Spock repeated, dark eyes clouding.

"I know temporary isn't part of your culture," she admitted. "But we have to be prudent. Don't we?"

Spock rose up on one elbow, looking down at her, one hand spread in a gesture encompassing both of them in their present state. "Nyota. I fail to see how any of this is **prudent**."

She laughed a little before getting somber again. "In Hawaii, we weren't **serious**. It was a fling, like a vacation dalliance. We agreed we might never see each other again. But if I do graduate work here in Starfleet, and we're both **here**, well, that's **different**." She spread her hands in explanation. "We'll have to know where we are with each other."

"We appear to be in bed together," Spock noted helpfully.

She laughed again. "Blunt but accurate. The thing is, it might not be quite so much a short term fling, if I do decide to do post-grad work in Fleet. We'll have to decide where we stand on all this."

"Vulcans do not form casual relationships," Spock said. Then he shrugged. "In truth, Vulcans do not form this sort of relationship at all, as a general rule, outside of bonding. But I am not fully Vulcan."

"And I'm very picky about who I see," Uhura said. "Still, I'm not ready to make any kind of serious commitment. And you can't be either."

"Bonding **is** a very serious step," Spock agreed, a frown between his brows.

"So we're agreed on that. But I do want to see **you**. And see if maybe I do like you enough to get serious, after closer acquaintance. And I take it, since you're here, you are interested in that too." She raised a brow, Vulcan style. "Or are you just interested in being friends with benefits and stopping there?"

"I don't know that term," Spock frowned. "But in spite of our precipitous behavior, I also do not take this lightly, nor the long term potential implications."

"So, we're agreed on where we are," Uhura confirmed. She smiled slightly. "Besides in **bed**. I have to admit, I like being **here** very much. I said I missed you before. But now I have been justly reacquainted with how very **much** I have missed you." She traced his lips with a finger again.

"I warned you not to do that," Spock said, drawing a sharp breath, his stomach muscles jumping. "Unless you were prepared to address the consequences. And you said you wished to go out, go shopping, have dinner..."

"Well it looks like we'll have time for all that later," Nyota murmured. "Plenty of time. In the future. But as for now..." she leaned up for long kiss. When they came apart for lack of breath, she gave him a dazzling smile. "Hello, again?"

"Hello," he nodded in slow surmise, and drew her closer for a second, more thorough reacquaintance.

_- fini review, review, review..._

_In this series, Linguistics; Hello, Again; Guess Who is Coming to Dinner; The Last Unicorn; and What It's Like._


End file.
